John Hagee: Gay Marriage Is Just 'Two Disturbed People Playing House'

According to John Hagee of the sepulchral Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, gay people in loving, committed, all-but-legally-marital relationships are nevertheless still sick and disordered.

... and we're not supposed to take offense to this?

The bigots are only going to get louder the closer we get to full marriage equality in the United States, and we need to be ready for their vitriol. They know this is a losing battle, but they're determined to go out fighting and spread as much lies and misinformation as they can; poisoning the well before they're rendered completely irrelevant.

Outstanding point. The gay - Lesbian divorce rate may wind up being no different, or it may be better or worse. Regardless, if they are to be equal citizens under the law, they deserve the same access to civil contracts, including marriage!

It still confounds the hell out of me that they make such a point of talking about the importance of reproduction in marriage, yet these people don't have an answer as to why an infertile couple or one that chooses not to have children is so different from a same-sex couple...

I guess when you believe so many other impossible things, one more illogical idea isn't that hard to wrap the mind around.

I guess "all things are permissible"... for heterosexual couples, at least.

It is curious how they cherry-pick verses out of the Old Testament, and complain about prooftexting when that's exactly what they're doing here. They don't sell their daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7), worry about how rare their steaks are (Leviticus 17:14), or go about with long, unkempt beards (for the men) (Leviticus 19:27).

I don't think it's about the bible at all. Sure they use the bible to justify their bigotry but I doubt it is the source of it. The way most people use the bible is to justify beliefs and sentiments they already have, rather than consciously trying to live as the bible would have them. Even if they were trying to live as the bible would have them, they're still doing what they think they ought to based on THEIR INTERPRETATION of the bible which has been fed a heaping helping of confirmation bias.

The REAL reason why they're against marriage equality is that "gays are icky" that's about all there is to it. There's no logic, no good reason, no verse in the bible, none of that. They're grossed out and don't want to have to think about it. They would rather "gay" didn't exist at all.

I think you're correct on all points! It's convenient to point to a book supposedly authored 2,000 years ago to justify present prejudices. Yet they're not even consistent in how they interpret that source! That's the point here, Nathaniel. Christians like Hagee claim that the whole Bible is authored by God and literally true, yet apparently only select parts of the Bible are set in stone and not open to interpretation. I can respect my orthodox Jewish friends who follow every word of the Halacha (the complete body of Jewish laws, including the 613 mitzvot), down to the minutiae of peeling all vegetables in case they came in contact with leaven. That's putting your money where your mouth is. The anti-gay bigots pick and choose what will justify their prejudices and find creative ways to dismiss the rest.

Perfect example: Today I came across this article written by theologian J. Daniel Hays that illustrates the kind of mental gymnastics Christians have to do to carry out their cherry-picking:

Not just that gays are icky, but that it's popular to hate on them. In their formative school years, kids strive to be popular. When I was young I didn't really fit in with the popular crowd, but I noticed that calling other kids fags was common amongst them. If the kids that other kids want to be associated with are calling the unpopular ones fags, then so do they. I'm sure a good percentage of them were destined to be gay or closeted themselves, but popularity was more important at that time. It's much different now days with kids, many more of them are more accepting of gays than their parents' generations. The religious right is so desparately concerned about that, that they advocate for laws that actually promote the discrimination that they helped foster as kids.

That's an interesting point. I wonder then if non-heterosexuals are "icky" in the same way that little boys think that girls are "icky". That is, they belong to the out-group and therefore are repulsive. If that were the case, that would make a lot of sense. It would also make my own views on human sexuality make a lot more sense because I never once thought of girls as icky just like I never thought non-heterosexuals were icky.

Actually, we could probably distill a lot of bigotry into the statement "they are the Other (big O), a member of the out-group and therefore I feel all manner of negative emotions about them despite the fact that I don't know them nor do I want to know them." Now, if only someone would teach them to love they neighbor...